I just had to share what’s currently happening in my classroom. As a result of reading such books as: Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix, The City of Ember by Jeanne DePrau, and The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper for reading groups, my students have caught the reading bug! Many of them have begun reading the next books in the series and informally meet to talk about what they are reading.

Traditionally, I’ve just stuck with the same novels on the fifth grade shelf. However, I decided to go out on a limb and obtain titles that I learned about in SLM 503, Children’s Literature. It has been worth the investment! I am so excited that my students are excited about reading!

After revisiting the Maryland Teacher Technology Standards and the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers, I now feel competent in several areas. I feel confident enough to advocate and demonstrate the integration of technology in my building for teacher and student use. My only question is the issue of student privacy.

I have joined a local technology Ning in my school district. I plan on adding content and learning new strategies and best practices. I have shared many of the technologies I learned in this course with my fellow teammates including DIIGO, TeacherTube, Skype, classroom blogs, and Animoto. My first experience with Skype was with a colleague. I have used Animoto to introduce and preview new reading group novels and Glogster to introduce a science unit. Using Google forms showed me that 59% of fifth graders view the media center as a place to learn new information. However, 22% say they learn new technology there. My next survey will be to find out what technologies students use at home.

I hope to make a difference for my students and help them become practicing 21st Century learners. I plan on building a toolkit (within a wiki) that will assist me in my endeavors that includes important documents like Andrew Churches’ “Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy”, UDL checklist, AASL and NET*S/T standards, the University of Houston’s Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, and Alan Levine’s 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story to name a few.

Chris Dede said it best when he stated, “There is no single best model for learning, either for student learning or for teacher learning.” We all require multiple avenues and I intend to deliver.

Thank you Lori and Margaret for pushing me to become a more effective teacher.

Currently, I’m working on designing an astronomy inquiry-based research project. There are so many inquiry models out there to choose from: Webquests, Minnesota’s Inquiry Process, Constructivist Learning Models for Inquiry, The Research Cycle, The Big6, AGOPPE, and more. However, I discovered they all have the same components: questioning, exploration, assimilation, inference, and reflection. Therefore, it’s taken me quite a while to process and digest this type of teaching and learning in order to even begin creting this unit.

I can honestly say I have always told students what they will research. For example, every October, students complete a report on a famous or influential Latino-American for Hispanic Heritage Month. Sure, students get to choose which Latino-American to research but the person is usually chosen from a list I have generated. I also tell them what information they need to include about the person. Now, I will need to allow students to come up with their own questions, at least.

Leslie B. Preddy has written a series of articles for School Library Media Activities Monthly (now School Library Monthly) about inquiry. Her five part series “Student Inquiry in the Research Process” has been very helpful to me in understanding the actual steps teachers and students take. She gives many tips and strategies to implement throughout the process. The ones I found most valuable were: the research journal which can be used at the end to aid in grading the process, questioning, daily reflection for students during the process, peer conference and evaluation, and rubrics. Preddy says, “Each student needs the opportunity to learn that research requires hard work, focus, and dedication.” Students are actually in the process of becoming lifelong learners.